Unfortunately Inappropriate Impulsiveness
by Shally-wa
Summary: Dess and Melissa are left behind when Jess and Jonathan go to rescue Rex. Melissa wants to be alone, but Dess won't shut up. Set during Rex's kidnapping in Touching Darkness. Melissa/Dess and Melissa/Rex, angsty.


**Title:** Unfortunately Inappropriate Impulsiveness  
**Characters:** Melissa, Dess, background Rex, Jessica and Jonathan  
**Pairings:** Melissa/Dess, Melissa/Rex  
**Rating:** T for cursing and kissing  
**Summary:** Dess and Melissa are left behind when Jess and Jonathan go to rescue Rex. Melissa wants to be alone, but Dess won't shut up.  
**Notes:** Set during _Touching Darkness_, after Rex is kidnapped.  
**Disclaimer:** I'm only playing with Scott's toys. If I wanted to make money off my writing, I'd be working in original fiction.

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**Unfortunately Inappropriate Impulsiveness**

_Pound pound. Pound pound pound._ Thirty-five thirty-six. Thirty-seven thirty-eight thirty-nine. Each crack of the mallet on the stakes echoes through my already aching head. I press my hand to my forehead. When I lower it, my fingers come back sticky with blood.

Dess ignores me entirely, and moves on to the wrapping of the wire. Meanwhile, I reach out in my mind, looking carefully, then frantically, for Rex. I sense Dess's crackling thoughts and burning resent, further out Jess and Jonathan on their own search, and further still the darklings. Parsing further, I pick up a faint human taste, and then a darkling one that is undeniably and painfully familiar. I close my eyes and slowly crumple to the packed dust. _Loverboy. I failed you._

"Melissa." Dess is approaching me now, evidently done with the protections. I can taste her presence in my mind, bitter and corrosive like battery acid. "Melissa," she repeats, "you have to stay awake."

"Ngggh," I mumble into the crook of my arm. I don't care about anything; at the moment, I see no real purpose in staying alive. There's nothing left.

"Melissa," she says yet again, irritation creeping into her voice. I crack my eyes open to see her standing almost over me. She reaches out an arm, and for a second I wonder if she is going to shake me, head injury or no.

She doesn't. Instead, she kneels down and gently nudges me up into a sitting position. Her gaze is searching, and I look down and away from her. "'M tired," I say. I try to lie down again, but her grip on my shoulder tightens and keeps me upright.

"Look," she snaps. "If you sleep, you die. Wake _up_."

"Bet you'd love that," I snap back.

I both see and sense her rolling her eyes. "You're not dying. Not on my watch. I know you don't want me here, and I sure as hell didn't ask to be stuck babysitting you, but we can't always get what we want, can we?"

I sigh. "Whatever you say, Desdemona."

She scowls at my use of her hated given name, but makes no audible reply. We lapse into a sullen silence for a time, me staring at the ground, her fiddling with her sash and attached weaponry. I make a motion to lie down again, which she stops almost instantaneously. She sucks in a breath through her teeth. "What is wrong with you?" she demands. "Are you suicidal, or what? Don't you grasp the fact that you _can't lie down?_"

"Not worth it," I inform her black-clad legs. "Nothing worth it, nothing. I failed him."

Recognition flits across her face, followed immediately by annoyance. "Oh, now I see what this is about. It's Rex, isn't it? And you – this act is all a punishment for how I failed Rex, isn't it?

I say nothing, but incline my head in an awkward sort of half-nod. Suddenly, her hands are grasping at my hoodie, thumbs tangled painfully with my hair. She slowly but forcefully brings my head around to face her, dark eyes boring into mine. "I know it all. I know you're more than just friends, but could you please just come out of whatever self-centered black hole of misery you've crawled into long enough to realize that there are people outside of your own personal universe? I may have kept secrets from you, but believe me, _I did have my reasons_."

I blink and try to flinch away, but Dess is holding me too tightly. "Oh no, you're not going to get away that easily," she says, and a mad, strangled laugh escapes her throat. "You are going to sit here, and you are going to shut up and listen until I am done talking. And believe me, I have a lot to say."

I must have looked frightened or startled or something because she shakes her head slightly, looking annoyed again. "Don't try to act so innocent, mindcaster. There was a reason I didn't want you messing around in my head. At least I still had my mind together at the time. But you have no qualms about that, do you?" My breath is stuck in my throat. She knows about Rex's father. Madeleine must have told her, I realize, and I quash down my indignant anger.

"Don't try to deny it, bitch-goddess," Dess says. "I've put up with your manipulating, your sulking, and your all-around _insufferable_ sense of superiority for far too long." I try to retreat back into my mind, to resume my fruitless search for Rex or close my eyes and fade away, but she is to close and unyielding for me to focus away from her. "It's all about you, all the time," she continues. "Even the search for Rex is: your Loverboy –" I flinch; I hadn't realized until now that the exchange of information when I entered her mind earlier that night was mutual "– and no one but you is capable of finding him. So presumptuous of you." She punctuates her statement with a shake of the head.

At this point, I am no longer thinking rationally at all. My emotions are stretched to the breaking point with the stress of Rex's kidnapping, my own physical pain, and Dess's rant (though taunt would probably be the better description). I want nothing more than to just get her to _shut up_, and she has brought her face so close already that it is scarcely any effort at all to lurch forward the remaining half-foot or so and press my lips to hers.

This is rather effective at shutting her up; however, it brings more problems than it is probably worth. For one thing, as my brain notices rather belatedly, I am now kissing her. This fact alone is several problems: first, we are both girls; second, we have always been more friends by convenience than of actual amity; and last of all, I am dating Rex – as Dess herself pointed out. Then there is the mental contact: by providing skin-on-skin, as it were, I have reopened the mental link between us.

I can feel her react, both physically and mentally. She stiffens, nearly pulling away, mirrored by a shock in my mind that nearly overwhelms my senses. Her mouth falls open, slightly at first. Even without the intimate mental connection, I can sense her confusion. Then it opens wider, and – _what the hell_ – her tongue slips out. Without quite understanding the consequences, I mirror her actions.

Her mind is relaxing, opening further to the link. Thoughts and images – memories, they must be – flit through my mind: sidelong glances along the cafeteria table while I am absorbed in my music and the task of fighting off the mental chatter, thoughts of _she's almost beautiful like that_ which were instantly quashed and a half-formed _longing_ that is easily as intimate as the emotions I have shared with Rex…

Rex. The realization of just what I am doing, just what this means jolts through me like lightning and shakes me like thunder. I pull back, blinking rapidly. Across from me, Dess is doing the same thing. No longer occupied, my mind expands outward. I can sense Jess and Jonathan, and with them a taste as familiar as an old, worn sweater. "Rex," I murmur half aloud, in shock. There is something unnervingly different about it, but it is still undeniably him. My throbbing headache returns, accompanied by an overwhelming wave of guilt.

Dess must see it on my face, or else realize the obvious, for she retreats further without even moving, the words 'I'm sorry…" forming on her lips.

I pitch forward, feeling unbearably top-heavy. She makes no motion to stop me, but before I touch the ground I meet her eyes again and see the unspoken agreement – _let us never speak of this again_.

I don't close my eyes or drift off, though. I grab my knees and curl in a ball, still tense. After a few moments, or minutes (I wasn't really following the time), I hear three pairs of footfalls, so sporadic they could only be made by an acrobat – and any people traveling with him.

I stagger to my feet as they are landing. Rex is there, pale but whole… and unmistakably human. I smile, and it feels like the most real thing from this whole crazy hour. He unsteadily makes his way toward me. "I knew it," I murmur, half to myself, and half to him. "You tasted human again."


End file.
